Books: The Killing Floor (Jacob Asch 3) by Arthur Lyons (1976)

“David Fein has a problem -he's a compulsive gambler. Lately, gambling has completely taken over his life. By the time he takes in Tortorello as a business partner, he is in big trouble. Like all men who are like this, he’s taken out a "quick loans" but even that has gotten out of control and now he can't cover his debts. Jacob Asch is contacted by Fein's wife, who hasn't come home for four days and she's frantic. Jacob figures Fein's probably sleeping off a four-day drunk. What he hadn't counted on was the body on the killing floor” 

All is not what it seems here in the third book featuring Asch. We open with a visit to the city of Vernon, a town five miles south of Los Angeles proper and id the nearest separate city to downtown Los Angeles. The population was 112 at the 2010 United States census, the least of any incorporated city in the state. Its population nearly doubled to 222 by the 2020 census, making it the second least populous city in the state, after Amador City. This makes me wonder how many people lived there in the mid-1970s when this book was written. The city is primarily composed of industrial areas and touts itself as "exclusively industrial". Meatpacking plants and warehouses are common. “Vernon stinks. It always stinks,” Jacob muses as he drives into the town in the opening chapter. 

Anyways, I know the publishers continued to sell Lyons as a more modern Raymond Chandler and with a panache style of Ross MacDonald, but I still see Jake as Jim Rockford – well, the R rated version of The Rockford Files. There’s just something about our smart, empathic hero with a wisecrack here and there that makes me feel this is more Rockford than Travis Magee. It’s all sexist as well – the women are drawn pretty horrible here, both the bad and the good ones, and that can be distracting. But Asch’s work is through, smart, and more logical than the way the police approach these crimes. Even the plot is plausible, but then there is another scene, like in book two, where two thugs (and a half a dozen from book two) are easily defeated by a wispy 180lb private investigator. So, somewhat plausible. 

I will add that I think a pattern is developing here in Lyons writing. We get the set up, then the investigation, have Asch ask all sorts of questions, go up avenues that seem to point in the right direction, only to find out what you thought was connected, really isn’t. He pulled that in book two and did it again here. We’ll see what happens in book four (and the last one I currently own) to see if he continues this style.